CHAPTER 26

THE FUTILE SEARCH FOR A NEW STABILITY:

EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS, 1919-1939

CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. An Uncertain Peace: The Search for Security

A. The French Policy of Coercion (1919-1924)
B. The Hopeful Years (1924-1929)
1. The Spirit of Locarno
2. Coexistence with Soviet Russia
C. The Great Depression
1. Causes
2. Unemployment
3. Social and Political Repercussions
II. The Democratic States
A. Great Britain
B. France
C. The Scandinavian Example
D. The United States
E. European States and the World: The Colonial Empire
1. The Middle East
2. India
3. Africa
III. Retreat from Democracy: The Authoritarian and Totalitarian States
A. Fascist Italy
1. Impact of World War I
2. The Birth of Fascism
3. Mussolini and the Italian Fascist State
B. Hitler and Nazi Germany
1. Weimar Germany
2. The Emergence of Adolph Hitler
3. The Rise of the Nazis
4. The Nazi Seizure of Power
5. The Nazi State (1933-1939)
C. The Soviet Union
1. The New Economic Policy
2. The Struggle for Power
3. The Stalinist Era (1929-1939)
D. Authoritarianism in Eastern Europe
E. Dictatorship in the Iberian Peninsula
1. The Spanish Civil War
2. The Franco Regime
3. Portugal
IV. The Expansion of Mass Culture and Mass Leisure
A. Radio and Movies
B. Mass Leisure
 1. Sports
2. Tourism
3. Organized Mass Leisure in Italy and Germany
V. Cultural and Intellectual Trends in the Interwar Years
A. Nightmares and New Visions: Art and Music
1. The Dada Movement
2. Surrealism
3. Functionalism in Modern Architecture
4. A Popular Audience
5. Art in Totalitarian Regimes
6. A New Style in Music
B. The Search for the Unconscious in Literature
C. The Unconscious in Psychology: Carl Jung
D. The “Heroic Age of Physics”
VI. Conclusion

CHAPTER SUMMARY

The treaties ending World War I did not assure peace as the League of Nations had little
power. France, fearing Germany, formed the Little Entente with the militarily weak states of
Eastern Europe. Occupying the Ruhr when Germany failed to pay reparations, France gained
little other than a disastrous fall in the German mark. By 1924, the Dawes Plan established a
realistic reparations schedule. The Treaty of Locarno made permanent Germany’s western
borders, but not the east. Germany joined the League, and in 1928, sixty-three nations signed the
Kellogg-Briand pact, renouncing war, but it lacked any enforcement provisions.
European prosperity, largely the result of American loans and investments, ended with the
Great Depression. The economist John Maynard Keynes favored increased government spending
and deficit financing rather than deflation and balanced budgets, but had little support. Britain’s
unemployment remained at 10 percent during the 1920s and rose rapidly in the depression.
France was governed, or ungoverned, by frequent coalition governments; its far-right was
attracted to fascism and many on the left by Soviet Marxism. The United States’ New Deal was
more successful in providing relief than in recovery, and unemployment remained high until
World War II.
Totalitarian governments, which required the active commitment of their citizens, came
power in Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union. Italian fascism resulted from Italy’s losses in the
Great War, economic failure, and incompetent politicians. In 1919, Benito Mussolini organized
the Fascio di Combattimento. Threatening “to march on Rome,” he was chosen prime minister in
1922. Legal due process was abandoned and rival parties were outlawed, but totalitarianism in
Italy was never as effective as in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.
In Germany, the depression brought the political extremes to the forefront. Adolph Hitler
headed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis). A powerful orator, Hitler published
his beliefs in Mein Kampf, and created a private army of storm troopers (SA), but it was not until
the depression that the Nazis received wide support. Hitler became chancellor in 1933, and a
compliant Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, giving him dictatorial power. In his quest to
dominate Europe, Hitler rearmed Germany, abolished labor unions, and created a new terrorist
police force, the SS. The Nuremberg laws excluded Jews from citizenship, and in the 1938
Kristallnacht, Jewish businesses and synagogues were burned and Jews beaten and killed.
After Lenin’s death in 1924, Joseph Stalin assumed leadership in the Soviet Union. In
1928, he announced his first five-year plan to turn the Soviet Union into an industrial society by
emphasizing oil and coal production and steel manufacturing. Giant collective farms were
created, and in the process 10 million lives were lost. Stalin’s opponents were sent to Siberia,
sentenced to labor camps, or liquidated. With the exception of Czechoslovakia, authoritarian
governments appeared in eastern Europe as well as in Portugal and Spain. In the Spanish Civil
War, the fascist states aided Francisco Franco and the Soviet Union backed the Popular Front.
Radio and movies become widely popular, as did professional sports. Automobiles and
trains made travel accessible to all. Issues of sexuality became more public and psychology
became more popular. In art, Dada focused upon the absurd and Surrealism upon the
unconscious. The unconscious “stream of consciousness” technique was used in the novels of
James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. The Bauhaus movement emphasized the functional in
architecture. It was also the “the heroic age of physics.” The discovery of subatomic particles
indicated that splitting the atom could release massive energies, and Werner Heisenberg’s
“uncertainty principle” had implications far beyond the study of physics.

SUGGESTED LECTURE TOPICS

1. The Birth of Fascism: Mussolini and the Italian Model

2. Ideology and Opportunism: The Dualistic Nature of Adolf Hitler's Policies

3. Propaganda and Pagan Ritual in the Totalitarian Theater State: The Example of Nazi
Germany

4. Soviet Russia under Stalin: Betrayal of the Communist Dream and Deeper Misery of the
Russian People

5. The Arts in an Era of Uncertainty [a slide lecture]